Wow, sweet -- I'm so glad to see that there's other people that share my feelings! I started looking to see if there was a group committed to cleaning up the fandom after a couple of my favorite IRC channels were becoming overrun with babyfurs and creepy fetishists. I absolutely LOVE the squeaky-clean rainbows and gumdrops surface of the fandom, and I LOVE being a fursuiter and a furry; but I HATE that I can't share that love with my Army/straight-laced friends.

So....my question now is, where do I start? What can I do to help clean our image up?

This is MapDark joining the group.I was happy to find your group as I really have become tired with the whole TMI-filled situations I've been faced with during my time in the fandom. I really think the fandom is a very good thing , but the bad things tend to sometimes overwhelm the rest.

So, I'm in the middle of a couple of various projects--renovating my partial, for one--and one new idea that popped into my head...was making a patch--or having one done up by someone else--of the blue IA logo (just the pawprint, leave out the initials), and slap that on a hat/beret/some kind of head covering.

Yes, I'm aware that that could invite some "negative feedback", but I wasn't planning on making any sort of "demonstration". It's just, y'know, something to wear, put it out there.

Comment if you'd like...or don't. Meanwhile, I have class to get ready for. Peace out!

I must start off with an apology. I have woefully neglected this group. Between my family, my job, and the web projects, I'm afraid I'd spread myself a bit thin. I need help. We need help. I ask anyone who has some spare time to please speak up. I have been actively recruiting people through my own IM contact lists to help out with the various web projects that have started up, and from the looks of it GamerFurs.net may see a good start soon, but more importantly Furry 101 should be more interviews with people who should be regarded as role models for the fandom at large. While I cannot predict the future... well... that's we're we come in.

If you have any spare time on your hands to either lend a hand to the various projects launched from me and/or this community, or can assist with maintaining the spirit of the community here and/or in real life, please speak up. Best way to reach me quickly is via IM (Twitter preferably) or via email.

Hey everyone, my name's Flinch and I'm a 20-year-old black-footed ferret fur. I've been in the fandom for 5 years now and I'm getting more and more annoyed with the direction the fandom has gone in. It's become an embarassment, and while I love being a fur I rarely associate with other furs because, as has been said in the past, "Anthropomorphics fandom is being overrun by sexually dysfunctional, socially stunted and creatively bankrupt hacks and pervs." I'm very happy to see there is a group that is trying to change all that.

First, Leam is retiring from the whole furry thing and with that I'm the only person leading the group as it where. I am open to having others join this group official to represent us and more specifically someone to co-chair this community with. If you're an idea-man like myself, please speak up.

furryne.ws is still running. It's still a barebones operation for the most part, but our RSS feeds go out to LiveJournal, FurNation, the Midwest Furries forum, Yiffy.TK, and Twitter and we average about a 100 visits a day so and a handful of new users each week so... we're out there. We are actively looking for people to improve upon the site so if you or someone you know has some skills in art, design, CSS and/or PHP, and have some free time please speak up.

Furry 101 is up and running, but we can use writers. We are speciifcally looking for people who can write tutorials on specific furry subjects such as starting and running a meetup/convention or fursuit construction/performance/survival. We can also use interviews with fandom personalities. We could use a good coder and design too, but for now, content is king, and if you have the time to draft something up, please speak up.

Now for some ideas I have:

Artist/comissioner pseudo-BBB: Myself and others have kicked this idea around for years but only once have I seen some progress on it, but that fell to the wayside... then another person picked up the idea, but progress has been next-to-nil. I'd like to revisit it again, but the biggest thing I need behind it will be a community to investigate and mediate incoming comments for artists and commissioners in addition to a coder and/or designer to draft something up.

Oekaki/Futbara hybrid: I like image/chan boards. I like the idea behind drawing/oekaki boards. I want to see about combining the two. Basically a person starts/uploads a drawing, and people can either comment on it, or reply by modifying the picture itself. You know... change the color scheme, add a background, yadda yadda. On top of that we can added tagging on both the user and artist level, and anything uploaded non-anonymously can be saved and put into original and modified galleries. I would first probably advertise this to a few furries first, but I see this expanding beyond that. Again, I need some help drafting this up.

Last thing: I don't think the name change from Burned Fur to IA help much and I'm tossing aroudn the idea of changing it back, mainly so when people do throw the Burned Fur name around, we can make our statement in regards to some random trolling in the Burned Fur name and leave by setting our example. Speaking of which... one of these days, once we get a few more projects off the ground I will see to getting us a proper community site to discuss future projects such as the idea above, and to draft what our example should be as a collective for specific issues. For now though if you have an issue, please bring it up here so we can discuss how it should be best handled.

The folks that brought your furryne.ws are working on another project entitled Furry 101. The site's purpose is to be a place where people can learn about furry and where furries can learn from other furries about art, crafts, writing, business, relationships, etc., etc.

The site just opened now and we're looking into getting down the overall design, but we could use you and your friends to help write articles for that site. If you're an artist, a storyteller, a fursuit maker, a puppeteer, an art/animation historian, help run a convention, maintain an online community, or simply have good advice to give to people based on your experience with the fandom, please help us and your fellow fan. Write for Furry 101. Ask me, the Dan Rather of furryne.ws, for more details on what you can do to help.

furryne.ws is coming along great. tixen is working on a more colorful template for the site, grayscalewolf is looking into the code and making changes as needed so it can be shared with the community via Google Code, and we've brought in natashasoftpaw to the team to help with coding duties. If you nice folks who are still watching this group haven't done so, please sign up for the site, and if you'd like, use our LJ news feed or if you've moved to Facebook we have an app for that too. O and we're always looking for more help in either coding, graphics, and administering the site in general so please speak up if you're interested.

As for other project... I have the domain name and the server space. Now I need a stable connection to upload it all. The next project will be Furry 101. Basically, I took cuprohastes idea and greatly expanded upon with it. This intent of this site will be more in-line with what we want to do with IA and help the community at large by creating what I guess can be described as a Lifehacker for Furries. We will help each other with not only "mundane" topics as art, writing, fursuits, yadda yadda, and more involved and personal topics in regards to the social and physical health of your fellow fan. When this all start I suspect my sources will come from my usually sources, but eventually I'd like to get experts on staff to submit original content, to have content be generated from a forum in the back, and heck, if this whole furry thing ever turns a profit, we can put a bounty out for good articles.

...and I continue to ramble. With Furry 101 will will serve as a guide to all fans. New fans can be shown the ropes by the old guard from their past experiences with the fandom.

This site can also serve as a portal to those who don't knwo about furry.

...and that's it. Sorry if it seems a bit muddled. I'm fighting off a nasty bug and my brain isn't all there yet.

furryne.ws is still there. We haven't had the time yet to see if we can add the image (or anything else) upload mod ourselves, and the pligg forums haven't offered any fix yet, but with any luck, that will come along with pligg 1.0.

We are looking to feature a charity of the month on furryne.ws if we can find out why the Featured Story mod breaks the current version of pligg (9.9.0.) We are open for suggestions for charities to feature, and please don't limit yourself to animal welfare charities. Anything that would help our community (ie: EFF, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, etc.) as well is nor than welcome to be a featured charity. Only real requirement for charities is that their books must be available to the public.

As always, please visit furryne.ws for the latest in furry-related news. Also please visit the upcoming news page and vote up any articles you like :)

Karma from Yiffy.TK and FurFinder as agree to run his new project, Anthropomorphics.net, in association with IA. Main feature that I myself am interested in the artist/commisioner feedback and conflict resolution system. The site's still in beta, but he's told him that he'll be working on this once he's finished with the chan board on Yiffy.TK .

The sexual education project is on the back-burner for now, but I spoke to Cupro' to encourage him to push on with the project despite the flack he's been given. He is, as always, busy with other project, but I'll be laying down the framework for this as soon as I can secure project space for it. I have a good idea who to get in touch with too so we have a legitimacy behind all of this.

So... anyone have a good name for that project? :)

In unrelated news... the home area I belong too (LAFF) could use some help in constructing their web page. Timoran is running a contest to for resigning the front page with an Amazon gift certificate as the prize. If you can help out, please stop by lafflist.org and submit your home page design.